My Poor Father...

Well, it's 4am and I can't sleep, so on top of the "normal" wee-hour pitterings and patterings -- doing laundry, packing for our trip to Savannah, GA, baking a quiche (you know, those things we ALL do when we can't sleep???)... Of course I will also blog.

And just to clarify, my father is not having financial problems. Even with a multi-year down-turn in the Real Estate market, he continues to thrive. I said "poor" because his recent travails are what has inspired this morning's blog. Either my father is a REALLY good sport, or all these years of having me for a daughter have worn him down...

AAAAAAAAAnywayzzzzz...

My poor father had to have a colonoscopy recently. I have to say at this point, that I'm really happy to have parents who are going to the doctors regularly, and doing what they need to do to stay healthy in their senior years. I want some day to get one of those 4-generation pictures, once my daughter graces us with a child of her own (NOT before I'm 50 though dammit!!!)... And I have every reason to expect my 'rents will comply quite nicely.

Also, as the reigning first-born (not to mention the only offspring within driving distance) I accompanied dear old dad on his trip to the hospital. This gave me a chance to chat with him, and to see and/or hear about the procedure and some of the preparations one would make for it.

The faint-of-heart or easily offended should tune out, right about... NOW!

OK, so the first thing is, the day BEFORE you have a colonoscopy -- which by the way is when a doctor sends a tiny camera waaaaaayyyy up your backside to have a peek around -- you have to "void" yourself of anything that might obscure the view. This means drinking some giant barrel of clear but apparently foul-tasting liquid at the rate of approximately one gallon per hour, for 24 hours prior to your procedure.

Lest this leave you with too much free time, the rest of your 24-hour period before this particular experience should, in fact, be taken up by pooping (to use the technical term, of course). It is my understanding that barfing would also be an option, and judging by the look on my dad's face when chugging his barrel-o-goop, he seriously considered it. But the point is, again, to clean out any- and everything that might be in the camera's path on "game day".

This led me to wonder, is this camera so expensive, perhaps, that they need to re-use them (shudder shudder)? And how do you sign up to be first on a camera, if so? But on to bigger and hopefully better thoughts...

My father dutifully chugged and pooped his guts out, and showed up for his appointment with the camera-weilding bum doctor 15 minutes early -- me in tow. His procedure went well, and in a timely fashion, and after about an hour or so, I was allowed back to the recovery area to see him. Because certainly, after having even a tiny camera shoved way up your butt, one would need to recover.

As we waited for the doc to come talk to us about his results, we passed the time with talk of poop, as would any normal family (???)... And it came to light that my father, being the sort to weigh himself daily, had noticed that over the past 24 hours he had lost about exactly three pounds.

The conclusion to be drawn from this, of course, is that in general, we humans are walking around with three pounds of poo in us on an average day. I found this interesting for two reasons. The first of these is that, personally I have been trying to lose weight, and I am now convinced that we should ignore that three pounds when weighing ourselves.

But my second conclusion is perhaps a bit more unsettling. Three pounds is also about the average weight of the human brain. So, at any given time, we're probably walking around being as much shit as brain. Even worse, should one literally "shit their brains out" it would be darn near impossible to figure this out from simply weighing one's self.

And then I 'm led to wonder... If you are full of shit, does that mean that on most days your poop outweighs your brains? And if you had "shit for brains", how exactly would this be diagnosed? If you get really constipated, is there any way this could adversely affect your brain? And if you swallow your gum once too often, could this cause you to wind up being full of shit?

I really hate to call this food for thought... But there it is.